by David Weber
He circled the last ventilator head and peered out at the open stretch between him and the edge of the tower. Wind flapped his clothing, and that was another cause for worry. Their primary escape plan called for a counter-grav free-fall leap off the tower roof, and with this much wind to blow them back into the tower as they fell… He pushed the thought aside and eased his sidearm out of its holster. The Peoples Marines had trained him well during his conscripted term of service, and the pulser felt comforting and familiar in his hand as he looked for the InSec man watching this particular roof. He didn't particularly like this part, but the CRU couldn't afford any witnesses to this operation.
There. Ushers enhanced vision found his target, and he went down on one knee, leveling the long-barreled military weapon across his forearm in textbook style. He acquired the sight picture exactly as his instructors had trained him ten years before, and his finger tightened on the stud.
A five-shot burst of nonexplosive darts tore through the InSec man in a spray of blood. He didn't even have time to scream, and Usher grunted in satisfaction as he glided further out onto the roof, head swiveling from side to side and pulser poised in a two-handed combat grip. Their briefing had insisted there was only the one guard, but Usher had seen too many operations blow up from faulty intelligence to take that for granted.
Only this time it seemed the briefing was correct, and he waved the others forward while he stepped to the edge of the roof to check the sight line. Perfect, he thought, and turned to watch the rest of the team set up.
Two of the Viper crew knelt on the roof, and spike-guns thudded with brief, pneumatic violence as they secured the launcher's feet, Two others lifted the tube and guidance unit onto the tripod, and the crew chiefs hands were busy with her data pad as she ran the self-test sequence on the first bird. She cocked her head as a minor malfunction light flickered, then put the missile aside and nodded in satisfaction as the backup bird passed its tests.
Usher turned back to his own responsibilities, waving his three-man security team into its perimeter positions. He beckoned the spotter over beside him and pointed at the tower on the far side of the green belt.
"Make sure you've got the right bay," he said quietly, and the woman nodded. She keyed up the schematic on her own goggles and moved her head carefully, aligning its outlines with the outline of the tower until the position pipper blinked directly atop an air traffic access point.
"Got it," she murmured. "Checked and confirmed"
"Then get comfortable. She's supposed to be along in the next ten minutes, but she may be delayed."
The woman nodded again and settled down, laying the riflelike laser designator across the roof parapet and making herself comfortable.
Usher gave the Viper crew another look. They were ready, and far enough back from the roof edge to be invisible from any cursory examination. The only real worry now was an overflight, and that shouldn't happen if their data on the air sweeps was as accurate as the rest of their brief.
If.
He made a quiet circuit of his perimeter, then found a nook out of the direct force of the wind that still gave him a complete field of view and settled down to wait.
"I suppose that's about everything, then—unless you can think of something else we need to look at, Oscar?"
Saint-Just shook his head, and Constance Palmer-Levy stood. Her staff followed suit with obvious relief. Few of them shared her taste for late-night strategy sessions, but people didn't argue when the head of InSec asked them to stay late.
"I'll drop by Statistics and light a fire under them about that correlation of CRU activities before I leave," Saint-Just told her. "I think you may be onto something there. Won't hurt to be sure, anyway."
"Good." Palmer-Levy stretched and yawned, then grinned wryly. "I think I may have stayed up a bit late even for me," she confessed.
"Then go home and get some sleep," Saint-Just advised.
"I will." Palmer-Levy turned away and waved her personal aide after her. The two of them stepped out of the conference room, gathering up her security detail as they went, and headed for the elevators.
The elevator deposited the Security chief and her bodyguards in the air car garage on the tower's four-hundredth floor. A tech team swarmed over her limo, completing the routine check for unpleasant surprises, and Palmer-Levy waited patiently for them to complete their task. Memories of Walter Frankel were far too vivid for her to begrudge the time it took.
"All clear, Ma'am," the senior tech said finally, scrawling his name on the signature pad of a memo board. "You're ready to fly."
"Thank you," she said, and led the way aboard.
The air car looked like a luxury civilian limo and boasted the internal fittings to match, but it was fast, heavily armored, and equipped with a sophisticated sensor suite based on the Marines' forward reconnaissance vehicles, and its pilot was a decorated combat veteran. Palmer-Levy smiled at him as she settled into her seat, and he nodded back respectfully, waiting until the hatch closed before bringing up his turbines and counter-grav. The limousine lifted without even a curtsy, and he sent it gliding along the ramp toward the outer access point.
"Mark!" the spotter's whisper crackled over her com, and Usher and his team tensed in readiness. The spotter shifted position, aligning the passive sights of her designator on the nose of the limousine sliding out of the access point, and tension crackled silently across the roof.
"Painting—now!" she snapped, and squeezed the stud.
An alarm shrieked, and Palmer-Levy's pilot twitched in his seat. One eye dropped to the lurid light on his EW panel, and his face paled.
"We're being lased!" he barked.
The launching charge lit the tower roof like lightning as it spat the Viper missile from the tube. Its tiny impeller drive kicked in almost instantly, accelerating it at over two thousand gravities even as its sensors picked up the glare of reflected laser light from the air car below and in front of it, and its nose dipped.
The pilot twisted the controls in a frantic evasion maneuver, but the Viper had an optical lock now, and his speed was too low to generate a miss. He did his best, but it was too late for his best to be enough.
Constance Palmer-Levy had one fleeting instant to realize what was happening, and then the edge of the Viper's impeller wedge struck.
The air car tore apart in a hurricane of splintered composites. Its hydrogen reservoirs exploded in balls of brilliant blue flame, and the commander of Internal Security and her bodyguards cascaded down across Nouveau Paris in a grisly rain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"Thank God."
Commander Ogilve relaxed at last as PNS Napoleon dropped out of hyper and the primary of the Seaford Nine System blazed ahead of her. Realistically, they'd been away and free from the instant they went into hyper, but his sleep had been haunted by nightmares of some disaster that would prevent him from delivering his data.
He glanced at his com officer.
"Record a most immediate to Admiral Rollins' personal attention, Jamie. Message begins: Sir, my latest Argus dump confirms total—repeat, total—withdrawal of Manticoran wall of battle from Hancock. Analysis of data suggests maximum remaining force in Hancock consists of one battlecruiser squadron and screening elements. Napoleon is en route to rendezvous with your flagship, ETA—" he glanced at his display "—two-point-two hours, with complete data dump. Ogilve clear. Message ends, Jamie."
"Aye, Sir."
Ogilve nodded and leaned back, letting himself feel his weariness at last even as he envisioned the hive of activity his signal was about to kick off aboard Admiral Rollins' flagship. A footstep sounded beside his chair, and he looked up at his exec.
"Somehow I don't think this is going to hurt our careers, Sir," the exec murmured.
"No, I don't imagine it will," Ogilve agreed unsmilingly. His exec came of prominent Legislaturalist stock, and the commander didn't like him a bit. Worse, he didn't trust his competence. But it sometimes seemed the
political game was the only one that counted in the Peoples Navy, and if that meant Commander Ogilve had to carry his exec on his back, then Commander Ogilve had better just have strong back muscles.
And, he thought sourly as the exec moved back to his own station, if he did get promotion out of this, maybe it would mean a new assignment that got him away from at least one incompetent asshole.
Admiral Yuri Rollins shook his head, still suffering the lingering aftereffects of numb disbelief, as the Argus dump's images played themselves out in his flagships main holo sphere for the third time.
"I can't believe it," he muttered. "Why in hell would Parks do something this stupid? It's got to be a trap."
"With all due respect, Sir, I don't see how it can be," Captain Holcombe disagreed. "For it to be a trap, they'd have to know about Argus, and there's no way they can."
"Nothing is impossible, Captain," Rear Admiral Chin said frostily, and Rollins' chief of staff flushed at her tone.
"I didn't mean to say that they couldn't possibly have detected the birds, Ma'am," he replied a bit stiffly. "What I meant was that if they knew about them, they would certainly have taken them out by now."
"Indeed? Suppose they know about them and choose subtlety over brute force? Why destroy them if they can use them to lie to us?'
"Unlikely," Rollins said, almost against his will. "Whatever tactical advantage deceiving us in Hancock might offer would be more than outweighed by the strategic damage they're suffering in other systems. No," he shook his head, "they'd never let the net stay up if they knew it was there."
"And if Admiral Parks is the only one to have noticed the platforms?" Chin asked. "If he's only just become aware of them, he might have chosen to use them in his own case while dispatching couriers to the commanders of other stations to alert them to the danger."
"Possible, but again, unlikely." Rollins turned away from the display and thrust his hands into his tunic pockets. "If he knows about them at all, then presumably he also knows they cover the entire system periphery. That means he can't sneak back in to set any sort of ambush without being picked up. Somehow I don't think he'd deliberately risk letting us in unopposed on the off chance that he could intercept us from some distant position."
"I suppose not." Chin folded her arms and looked accusingly into the sphere. "In that case, though, I have to wonder what he thinks he's up to."
"I think it's another indication he doesn't know about Argus, Ma'am," Captain Holcombe offered. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. "If he's not in Hancock, he almost has to be picketing the Alliance systems in the area. Assuming that to be the case, I believe he uncovered Hancock precisely because he feels we can't know he's done it. After all, one of Argus' primary objectives was to cut down normal scouting ops to make Manty commanders overconfident in hopes they'd make mistakes just like this."
"True." Chin pursed her lips a moment, then nodded. "I suppose it just seems too convenient for him to suddenly do exactly what we want him to."
"But do we want him to?" Rollins said, and both his subordinates turned to him in surprise. "Certainly this offers us a perfect opportunity to smash Hancock, but it also means any attack would close on so much empty space, as far as warships are concerned. Battlecruisers? Piffle!" He took a hand from a pocket to wave it dismissively, then stuffed it back in place. "We wanted battle squadrons, and they're somewhere else now. Besides, how long do you think Parks is going to stay wherever he is? Their Admiralty won't let him leave Hancock uncovered for long, whatever he wants to do, so if we're going to take advantage of his absence, we have to move now."
"Without confirming with Admiral Parnell?" Chin's question was a statement, and Rollins nodded.
"Exactly. We're eighteen days' message time from Barnett, even by courier boat. That's thirty-six days for a two-way message. If we wait that long, they're bound to reinforce Hancock."
"Can we wait until the scheduled deadline, Sir?" Chin asked, and Rollins frowned. Officially, only he and his staff were supposed to know the timetable, but he'd invited Chin here, despite her status as his most junior battle squadron commander, because he respected her judgment And if he wanted her input, she had to know the extent of his problems.
"I don't think so," he said finally. "Assuming Admiral Parnell doesn't postpone, we're supposed to move in another thirty-one days."
Chin nodded, her face showing no sign of triumph at finally learning the date the war was supposed to begin.
"In that case, of course, you're right, Sir. We can't wait that long if we want to hit them before they come to their senses."
"I said from the beginning this whole thing was over-centralized," Holcombe muttered, "tanking ops schedules that tightly with this much distance between operating areas is—"
"Is what we're stuck with," Rollins said a bit sharply. His chief of staff closed his mouth with a snap, and Rollins shrugged. "As a matter of fact, I tend to agree with you, Ed, but we're stuck with the way things are."
"So what do you plan to do, Sir?" Chin asked.
"I don't know." Rollins sighed. "I suppose it comes down to which is more important—Hancock's facilities, or its task force."
He lowered himself into a chair and stretched his legs out before him while he frowned up at the deckhead and considered his options.
The original plan had given good promise of success against Hancock. Admiral Coatsworth's arrival from Barnett would increase his own "official" strength by over fifty percent, and the Manties wouldn't even know Coatsworth was coming until he hit Zanzibar in their rear. With Coatsworth behind them and the Seaford task force in front of them, they'd be caught in a vise.
But if Hancock was empty, the entire ops plan went straight out the lock. There was no telling where the Manties were, or in what strength—not, at least, until the other Argus collectors reported in. Still, Hancock was the only Manty repair facility in this sector. If he was going to have to hunt for them anyway, depriving them of anywhere to repair damages would be an invaluable first step.
He drew a deep breath and straightened, and Holcombe and Chin turned toward him at the movement
"We'll do it," Rollins said simply. Holcombe nodded in approval, and Chin looked relieved that someone else had had to make the call.
"Shall we wait until we hear from the other. Argus nets, Sir?" Holcombe asked. Chin said nothing, but she shook her head in instant, instinctive disagreement, and Rollins agreed with her.
"No." He thrust himself up out of the chair. "Waiting would burn another six or seven days, and if we're going to do this, we don't have the time to spare."
"Yes, Sir."
The admiral paced briefly back and forth, thinking hard, then nodded.
"I want the task force ready to move out within twenty-four hours, Ed. Send a courier to Barnett to advise Admiral Parnell of our intentions. It should still get there before Coatsworth pulls out, so instruct him to rendezvous with us at Hancock. We'll consolidate our forces and then move on Zanzibar together. After that, we can hook up to take out Yorik or Alizon. By that time, we'll probably have picked up enough additional intel to know where Parks went and how he's deployed."
"Yes, Sir."
"Admiral Chin, I'll want your squadron to probe Hancock as we go in." Chin nodded, but her surprise showed, for her dreadnoughts were less powerful than the other battle squadrons.
"I haven't lost my senses, Admiral," Rollins said dryly. "Your ships are lighter, but they should be more than adequate to deal with battlecruisers, and if we're not going to get anything bigger, I at least want to nail as many of them as possible before they run. Besides, if there is something nasty waiting for us, you can pull a higher acceleration than superdreadnoughts."
In short, he thought, they could get the hell out of it faster than anything else he had, and he saw understanding in Chin's eyes as she nodded.
"And Admiral West's battlecruisers, Sir?' she asked.
"We'll attach them to you, but don't let him get too fa
r ahead of you. His squadron's understrength to start with—I don't want him tangling with Manties at three-to-two odds while you're too far astern to assist."
"Understood, Sir."
"Good." Rollins shoved his hands back into his pockets and rocked on his heels, staring down into the holo sphere, and his eyes were hard.
"Very well," he said at last, "let's get moving. We've got a lot of details to settle before we pull out."
The three officers turned and strode from the compartment, leaving the display alive behind them, and the empty, quiet image of the Hancock System glowed silently in its depths.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
"Still nothing."
Sir Yancey Parks took another quick turn about his flag bridge, and his staff busied themselves with routine tasks that happened to keep them out of his path. All but Commodore Capra, who watched his admiral with a painstaking lack of expression.
"I hate this kind of waiting for the other shoe," Parks fumed.
"Perhaps that's why they're doing it, Sir." Capra's voice was quiet, and Parks snorted.
"Of course it is! Unfortunately, that doesn't make it any less effective." Parks stopped pacing and turned to glare down at the holo sphere. CIC had switched to astrography mode, showing the sparse stars of his command area and the most recent data on friendly and enemy dispositions, and the admiral jabbed an angry chin at the bland light dot of Seaford Nine.
"That bastard over there knows exactly what he plans to do," he said, pitching his voice for Commodore Capra's ears alone. "He knows when he plans to make his move, what he plans to do, and how he plans to bring it off, and all I know is that I don't know any of those things."
He fell silent again, chewing his lip while acid churned in his stomach. War games and training exercises, he was discovering, were one thing, with nothing more at stake than one's reputation and career. Actual operations were something else again—life and death, not simply for you, but for your crews and, quite possibly, your kingdom, as well.